Sony’s PS3 motion controller, officially dubbed PlayStation Move, is to be available this autumn for about $100.
Previously it has garnered much attention both for its sex toy styling and its obvious similarity to the Wiimote, but alpha play-testing now reveals it also possesses the rather more dubious distinction of being “discernibly inferior” to the Wii in terms of lag and accuracy.
Sony’s spiel:
The controller in action:
Reportedly Sony has 36 companies signed up to produce compatible games.
A number of titles have already been announced:
From a media hands-on:
• We hate to say this about “pre-alpha” software, but we’re feeling lag. An on-rails shooter we tried out, dubbed The Shoot, was discernibly inferior to shooting experiences we’ve had on the Wii, both in precision and refresh rate of the aiming cursor.
• The gladiator game is about as fun as it looks.
Unfortunately, while it’s less of a defined experience than something like the sword game on Wii Sports Resort, you’re still working through a library of sensed, pre-defined actions instead of a true 1:1 fighting game with simulated physics.
Not that it isn’t possible with PlayStation Move, just that it’s not this.
• The lightness of the controllers means we might be feeling less of that Wiimote fatigue, always a good thing! There’s an aspect of the controller that feels a little cheap, but at the same time we wouldn’t call it fragile.
• As far as we can tell, the control scheme for Socom 4 is quite similar to dual-controller shooter setups on the Wii, with the camera moving based on your aiming cursor hitting the edge. It’s hard to see this as the preferred hardcore setup, but we’re told it’s configurable, so we’ll try and see what else is on offer.
For Sony to announce its new product with such flaws so evident seems an almost improbably elementary marketing blunder.
Sony returns the favour?
If you make a controller it will look like a controller. Quite hard to come up with new ideas since our hands are the same shaped for each console.
Think about mouse, keyboard, joystick, touchpad, trackball. When somebody comes up with a successful design, most likely will be a copy of that or more.
I just want to say i don’t care if different products use the same controller design if that one is good.
Sony’s current current controller can trace it’s roots back to the original Playstation’s controller, which has a near identical layout to an SNES controller. Back in the days of the FF and Chrono Trigger re-releases on the PS1 I transplanted a PS1 controller board into an SNES controller shell and only had to modify the locations of the start and select buttons by a fraction of an inch to make it work. They were that similar.
U PEOPLE ARE FUCKING STUPID THIS THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!
that was just a phallic lightbulb with a handle rather than controller.
o.0 2 glowing balls of fire!?